f the great Fury under the sea, and wrestled with her; and my
torngak and I overcame her, and set many of the seals and other animals
free."

"Huk!" exclaimed the assembly, in gratified surprise.

Lest the reader should feel some surprise also, we may as well explain
what the Greenlanders believed in former times. They held, (perhaps
they still hold), that there were two great spirits--the one was good,
named Torngarsuk; the other was bad, and a female--a Fury--without a
name. This malevolent woman was supposed to live in a great house under
the ocean, in which by the power of her spells she enthralled and
imprisoned many of the sea monsters and birds, thus causing scarcity of
food among the Eskimos. The angekoks claimed to have the power of
remedying this state of things by paying a visit to the abode of the
Fury.

When an angekok has sufficient courage to undertake this journey, his
torngak, after giving him minute instructions how to act, conducts him
under the earth or sea, passing on the way through the kingdom of those
good souls who spend their lives in felicity and ease. Soon they come
to a frightful vacuity--a sort of vasty deep--over which is suspended a
narrow wheel, which whirls round with great rapidity. This awful abyss
is bridged by a rope, and guarded by seal sentinels. Taking the angekok
by the hand, his torngak leads him on the rope over the chasm and past
the sentinels into the palace of the Fury.

No sooner does the wicked creature spy the unwelcome visitors than,
trembling and foaming with rage, she immediately sets on fire the wing
of a sea-fowl, with the stench of which she hopes to suffocate angekok
and torngak together, and make both of them captives. The heroes,
however, are prepared for this. They seize the Fury before she has
succeeded in setting fire to the wing, pull her down, and strip her of
those amulets by the occult powers of which she has enslaved the
inhabitants of ocean. Thus the spell is broken, for the time at least,
and the creatures, being set free, ascend to their proper abodes at the
surface of the sea!

After this explanation the reader will easily understand the flutter of
excitement that passed through the assembly, for, although feasting at
that moment on a walrus, they had suffered much during the latter part
of that winter from the scarcity of animals of all kinds.

But Angut did not flutter. That peculiar man was an incorrigible
sceptic. He merely smil